Sullivan: 6 weeks needed to respond to Coakley requests

Friday

Feb 9, 2018 at 5:15 PMFeb 9, 2018 at 5:15 PM

Jeff McMenemy jmcmenemy@seacoastonline.com @JeffreyMcMenemy

PORTSMOUTH – City Attorney Robert Sullivan said it will take “approximately six weeks” for city staff to collect records related to the Coakley Landfill Group (CLG) that a group of Seacoast lawmakers and the former assistant mayor are seeking.

In responses to two different Right to Know requests – one filed by former Assistant Mayor Jim Splaine, a second filed by state Reps. Mindi Messmer, D-Rye, Renny Cushing, D-Hampton and Phil Bean, R-Hampton – Sullivan repeats comments about the CLG’s record-keeping that he has made previously to the Portsmouth Herald.

“This is a large complex project insofar as the records commence in approximately 1992 and the landfill has been in very active remediation since that time to the present date,” Sullivan states in his response to the Right to Know requests. “It appears that when fully assembled the records which you seek will constitute approximately 100 bankers boxes of documents … ,” Sullivan said.

The search for the records has been complicated by the fact that since 1992, Portsmouth City Hall has moved from Daniel Street to its current location on Junkins Avenue, Sullivan said.

“The boxes of documents have become redistributed to several municipal buildings located in different parts of the city,” Sullivan stated. “The work of collecting and indexing the documents is being performed by municipal employees who simultaneously have other work which needs to be done.”

The CLG is made up of municipalities and groups that used the landfill – a Superfund cleanup site in North Hampton and Greenland - including companies that transported trash there.

The entities have been required to pay into a trust created through a 1991 Record of Decision by the Environmental Protection Agency and N.H. Department of Environmental Services.

The city of Portsmouth is required to pay 53.6 percent of all remediation costs under the agreement.

The lawmakers asked for “copies of all Coakley Landfill Group bank records, copies of annual audited financial reports of the operations of the parties” that make up the CLG and an estimate “of the current liabilities for all towns” in the CLG, according to a copy of the Right to Know request.

Messmer stated previously that they asked for the information “because we want to know exactly what the Coakley Landfill Group is doing with their money.”

“They’re taking money from the taxpayers of Portsmouth and taxpayers from other towns and we’re concerned with what they’re using it for,” Messmer said. “They hired a lobbyist who told me he’s going to be lobbying against my legislation, too.”

“I just want things to be as transparent as possible. They should be accountable to the city of Portsmouth taxpayers, too,” she added.

Sullivan has repeatedly said the group has spent about $27 million on remediation at the site with roughly $13 million coming from city taxpayers.

But at Monday’s City Council meeting, Sullivan acknowledged that the $13 million estimate is not accurate.

“The actual city expense is lower than that,” Sullivan said, after first pointing out that when he went to Boston College “I was an English major.”

City Manager John Bohenko said Monday it is unclear how much Portsmouth taxpayers have paid to the CLG over its existence.

In his research so far, Bohenko said the city borrowed about $4.2 million to pay for Coakley-related costs when the group was formed, and the cost of the principal and interest will be $5.8 million when it’s paid off shortly.

In addition, the city has paid about $1.2 million for other Coakley costs from 2000 to 2018, Bohenko said. That brings the total spending he’s been able to identify so far to more than $7 million.

Bohenko said he is continuing to work “with members of the Finance Department” to get the exact amount of money that the city of Portsmouth has had to pay to the CLG.

“I want to be absolutely certain we have the right number,” Bohenko said Friday.

Splaine, in an interview Friday, said he was “not impressed with the response.”

“What is stunning to me is the oversight, the management of the records, tells me that the Coakley Landfill Group has not been doing a good job,” Splaine said.

He also is disappointed that it appears instead of getting an organized response and answers to questions he and the lawmakers asked, they are being told to “go in and look at thousands of records.”

“There needs to be an accounting, there needs to be an audit. That audit must go back to the beginning,” Splaine said about the CLG’s spending.

Because the CLG did not have a clerk to make sure the work that was billed for was done properly, “then we’re wasting money and that is malfeasance.”

“It’s time for the City Council to take this extraordinarily seriously,” Splaine said.

He acknowledged that he takes “part of the blame” for not asking questions about CLG’s spending and management sooner.

“I’m embarrassed for myself after four years on the council it got by me,” Splaine said.

Messmer, in an interview Friday, said she’s been surprised that the City Council hasn’t shown more concern about the CLG’s spending.

“The only concern I heard was about the need to make different rules in terms of lobbying,” Messmer said about the City Council’s conversation on the CLG during their meeting this week. “I didn’t hear any concern about the money.”

Sullivan has previously said that all the money spent by the CLG has been authorized by the executive committee at their teleconference meetings. But he acknowledged there has been no formal accounting of how the money has been spent.

The biggest single expense of the CLG has been the roughly $9 million cost to cap the landfill, Sullivan said Friday.

The lawmakers also asked the CLG for “copies of all reports to the New Hampshire Attorney General on behalf of Coakley Landfill Group or the city of Portsmouth” and all submissions to the New Hampshire Division of Charitable Trusts, “including all annual financial reports (IRS Form 990, or functional equivalent,” according to their letter.

Messmer said the lawmakers are concerned with what they see as the lack of transparency from the CLG and want to know how they could have spent that much money at Coakley, especially because there is no treatment system there.

“We don’t understand what they are and who they report to,” Messmer said. “No entity can take in $27 million and not report how they’re spending it in some way.”

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